[Militant No. 440, 26th January 1979, p. 10]
When the Shah finally left the country last week, hundreds of thousands of jubilant demonstrators filled the streets to celebrate his departure. Portraits and statues – those which remained – were torn down and destroyed. The remnants of the Peacock Throne crumbled like a mummy exposed to the air.
There was no mistaking the profound hatred of the Iranian masses for the Shah and his monarchical dictatorship, which was soaked in the sweat and blood of the Iranian masses. Lynn Walsh recounts the rise and fall of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Despite the Shah’s grandiose claim to be the true son of Iran’s 2,500 year old monarchy, his Pahlavi ‘dynasty; dates only from 1925. It was founded by his father, Reza Khan, who far from being born to rule actually seized power through a coup in 1921.
Using the notorious Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan had drowned in blood the Gilan Soviet Republic set up in the north of the country under the impact of the Russian revolution. Needless to say, although Reza Khan employed a few anti-imperialist phrases and carried out some limited reforms, his highly repressive state was dedicated to the defence of Iran’s property-owning exploiters.
Like many an upstart before him, Reza Khan set out to legitimise his regime by surrounding it with all the monumental pomp and ceremony of an ancient dynasty. He began the process of regaling Iran’s largely peasant population with cooked-up history and monarchist cant which was to reach unparalleled heights under his son.
Reza Khan adopted a nationalist pose, but under his rule the country remained a satellite of British imperialism, and it was British business interests which sucked the main profits out of Iran’s developing oil industry.
In 1941, however, unsure of Reza Khan’s reliability in the war with Nazi Germany, Britain and Russia (allies for the moment) kicked out the first Pahlavi. Determined to have complete control over this strategically vital region, the Allies installed his more malleable son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, as Shah.
Puppet
Thus the now departed Shah was from the very beginning a puppet, though in the last few years he had begun to tug ungratefully on the strings once held so tightly by his powerful mentors.
The Shah’s recent ignominious exit, moreover, was not his first. In the summer of 1953 the proud peacock of later years was forced to flee to Baghdad and thence to Rome by a mass movement on the streets.
The threat to the Pahlavi regime came from the radical nationalist movement led by Mosadeq. Iran’s Communist Party, the Tudeh, which was hamstrung by its enforced role as a tool of Moscow’s foreign policy and its lack of independent class policies, completely failed to gain a significant influence. As in India under Gandhi and in Egypt under Nasser, it was the liberal-capitalist nationalist party which came to the forefront of the popular movement.
In 1951 Mosadeq was elected prime minister, and promptly set out to nationalise the country’s oil to halt the drain of profits abroad. British imperialism immediately organised to bring him down, using both economic pressure and under-cover disruption in Iran.
In 1952 the Shah tried to dismiss Mosadeq but failed. The next year, however, the United States government, regarding Iran as a crucial ‘front line’ buffer against Russian encroachment on the Middle East and South Asia, decided to act.
Mass demonstrations against the monarchy sent the Shah scurrying into exile. But Mosadeq’s National Front was just a loose grouping of middle-class politicians. It was incapable of fighting for social and economic demands which would have welded together a mass movement for a fundamental change in society.
CIA help
Exploiting Mosadeq’s shaky position, the United States – through the Central Intelligence Agency and with some help from British intelligence – set to work. Post-Watergate Congressional enquiries, as well as the first-hand testimony of ex-CIA agents themselves, have amply confirmed the CIA’s key role in the restoration of the Shah.
Gold and provocateurs were sent in to create turmoil and assist the reactionary forces. Bolstered with US arms and assured of American government backing, the Iranian army arrested Mosadeq and rolled out the carpet for the Shah’s return.
Back on the throne, the Shah set about making his rights more secure – this time with the generous help of the US which wanted to build up Iran as a bastion of its influence.
All organised political opposition was crushed, and genuine trade unions were made illegal. With US support the Shah began to re-arm his vast military machine, as much against mass opposition from within as any enemies outside.
In 1956, moreover, the Shah re-organised the security forces, forming the now notorious secret police organisation, SAVAK, which ruthlessly hunted down his opponents.
Even so, the Shah was not completely secure. Despite the proclamation in 1963 of the so-called “White Revolution”, a programme of reforms which would allegedly bring prosperity and democracy to Iran, that year saw another revolt against the dictatorship.
By gunning down thousands in the streets, the Shah survived. Repression was again intensified. It was then, moreover, that the Ayatollah Khomeini was bundled off to exile in Turkey and later Paris – to await his moment of revenge.
The Shah then speeded up his reforms. The most important were in the countryside. Lingering feudal relationships were abolished – in order to hasten up the development of capitalist rent and farming techniques. This accelerated the massive exodus to the towns – a pre-requisite of the country’s modernisation.
Apart from the destruction of the traditional peasantry, industrialisation was achieved at an enormous cost to the rapidly expanded urban working class, which was forced to live and work under atrocious conditions.
Modernisation, however, extended the Shah’s lease. Dragging Iran’s feeble capitalists class into the 20th century, the Bonapartist monarchy largely pre-empted the economic programme of the National Front, thus cutting away much of its support.
At the same time, like other self-appointed caretakers, the Shah and his family and their hangers-on grew fabulously rich on the commercial privileges they reserved for themselves – and on the proverbial “commission”, the opulent bribery, of the East.
But like all “strong” states, the Shah’s was a regime of crisis. Lacking secure support even among the middle strata, it above all feared revolt by those carrying the main burden of economic development, the working class.
Hence the indispensability of SAVAK. In the last decade or so, this infamous organisation, with teams of sadists who deliberately set out to terrorise potential opponents by the virtually indiscriminate use of torture, became notorious throughout the world.
Bad dreams
After the fashion of most personal dictators, the Shah claims he knew nothing of the torture chambers: it was the unauthorised work of lackeys; he was misinformed by his advisers, etc. But who will believe these pathetic, despicable disavowals of a fallen dictator?
In the last few years the sorcerer’s apprentice began to assert his independence in the grand style. Once the pawn of the foreign oil companies, Iran became one of the most militant members of OPEC after the 1973 Middle East war.
Growing fat on the inflated oil revenues, the Shah bought even more industrial equipment from the West and augmented his armoury with the most expensive and sophisticated weapons.
Posing as the leader of a great power, Shah Pahlavi began to lecture the Western leaders on the dreadful decadence of their societies, and pompously advise them on the best way to deal with political opposition and strikes.
But the Shah’s sleep, it seems, was disturbed by bad dreams. He suffered from a recurring nightmare in which he saw the resurrection of toil and trouble. He and his family, reputedly one of the richest in the world, prudently deposited their cash in Swiss banks and bought up property in Europe and America – as a hedge against revolution.
In fostering industrial development to aggrandise his regime, however, the Shah prepared the means of his own destruction. Opposition can be repressed for so long. But the development of factories, transport, oil production, cannot but produce a working class which, as it grows and begins to feel its strength, will demand a share of the new wealth – and push against the bars of the dictatorship.
The revolutionary events of recent weeks, which have once again sent the Shah scurrying into exile, more than likely for ever this time, signifying the coming-of-age of Iran’s youthful proletariat.
Having brought down the Shah they will now dig a grave for all the other exploiters on their backs.
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